Close to Nature

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Issue 34

Tourism in Tanzania appears to be booming. But so are safari companies' claims for their new lodges and camps: the best, the most eco-friendly, the most remote, the most luxurious... Hannah Forbes Black talked to a few industry insiders about what really lies beneath all those gushing superlatives. Safe, stable, beautiful Tanzania has a considerable commitment to conservation. Thirty percent of its land is protected – an incredible figure that puts the EU’s goal of 11 per cent to shame. It’s little wonder that more and more travellers looking for wildlife and wilderness are opting for Tanzania. Catherine Lloyd-Gill, public relations manager at Elewana Afrika, is in no doubt that Tanzanian tourism is on the ascendant. “For so many years Tanzania was in the shadow of Kenya,” she says. “If you said the word safari, people thought of Kenya. But now Tanzania has started to shine in its own light.” Elewana Afrika offers three luxury places to stay in prime safari country. All are beautiful, thoughtful properties that reflect their surroundings, and Tarangire Treetops is the showpiece: an upmarket Peter Pan fantasy of luxury treehouses wrapped around giant baobab and marula trees.  “I’d say our key clients are people who want luxury and service and attention to detail but want to be in a property that’s relatively small and that reflects the environment they’re in,” Catherine explains. “Some people choose large hotel-style lodges because they’re like hotels. You’re in the bush but you’re enclosed, protected. Treetops is targeted at a different type of person.” Glen Dennis, manager of Tarangire Treetops, descibes the lodge’s style as “understated luxury”. He’s of the belief that you don’t have to suffer any discomfort to have an authentic bush experience – he himself takes a proper bed with him when camping in the bush. Beautiful as Tarangire Treetops may be, it isn’t quite the most ostentatiously luxurious lodge in Tanzania. Ngorongoro Crater Lodge probably takes the crown. On the brink of the Crater, the lodge is a baroque mixture of styles that owners CC Africa call Maasai-meets-Versailles. Massages and champagne are optional extras, and guests are assigned a personal butler for the duration of their stay. Is it really possible to combine this kind of luxury with a genuine feel for the wilderness? Malcolm Ryen, an ecologist with safari company Adventure Camps and part-time manager of the impeccably eco-friendly Mdonya Old River Camp in Ruaha, has reservations. “Some Tanzanian lodges look out of place. The bigger the property, the bigger the environmental impact. On the other hand, Tanzania is huge, there’s a lot of land. So a property can be damaging a small area, but preserve a bigger area through conservation activities.” To subscribe or buy this edition, click here Mdonya Old River Camp runs on solar power, and there are no permanent structures; warthogs, lions and buffalo herds stroll right through. Camps like this, a compromise between comfort and conscience, are increasingly popular as people become more environmentally aware. But if you really want to ensure that you minimise your ecological footprint, you can try do-it-yourself camping instead of a tented camp. Every park offers public campsites, although these vary from the well-equipped to the long-neglected. Fiona McGain has been living in Tanzania on and off since she was eight years old, and estimates that she’s been on over fifty safaris. “Personally, I prefer camping to staying in a lodge. I can see why some need more comfort; camping in the bush is not everyone’s cup of tea. But you get better stars when you’re camping!” According to Fiona, things have changed a lot over the past two decades. “When I first started going on safari, there were a heck of a lot fewer people in the parks. The other day I was driving through Seronera in the Serengeti and we counted no less than 25 cars around one leopard. It was like rush hour traffic. It’s a lot busier and there are a lot more hotels and lodges these days. But it’s still easy to get away from the hordes and have a great safari experience if you want. The parks are big enough to cope with the volume of visitors if managed properly.” Mobile safaris are bridging the gap between self-organised camping trips like Fiona’s and the creature comforts offered by lodges. Nomad Tanzania, an experienced and ecologically sensitive company, offers excellent mobile safaris in Serengeti National Park and the Loliondo Conservation Area, following the sweep of the wildebeest migrations or simply moving wherever the game viewing is likely to be at its best. Nomad’s slogan, “Life, love, and the pursuit of wilderness”, is a tongue-in-cheek summing up of the safari experience. Oddly enough, one way to make sure you have a great safari is to avoid the national parks entirely. Safari lodges like Ndarakwai Camp, which is happily placed between Kilimanjaro and Meru, and Tarangire Treetops in the Tarangire Conservation Area, are proving that game-viewing can be just as satisfying outside the parks. At Treetops, I saw more game outside the park than inside, including a pair of lions sloping off into long grass. A night game drive at Ndarakwai was all the more satisfying because I knew that it would have been impossible within the boundaries of a national park. Walking safaris, too, are banned in most parks, but in conservation areas you can explore the territory on foot. Walking can be a little tiring, and even a little scary, but it’s one of the most satisfying ways of encountering wildlife. Of course, if you’re staying outside the parks, you don’t have to pay park fees. This advantage is becoming more significant as the fees creep up. Some feel that the dramatic increases introduced this year will damage Tanzania’s tourism industry. To enter the Ngorongoro Crater conservation area you now pay $30 per person per day, plus an extra $10 to go down into the Crater itself, and $100 per car. But Glen at Tarangire Treetops thinks the park fees will have little effect. “It doesn’t really make any difference. Once someone’s spent several thousand dollars on a safari, they don’t mind spending a few hundred more to get into the parks. And backpackers on a budget just pile in ten to a car and split the $100 between themselves.” Malcolm Ryen believes that the increase in park fees in the north will boost interest in Tanzania’s lesser-known south, where park fees are still low. “Many tour operators are only discovering the south of Tanzania because the north gets so booked up. So they come south and say, ‘Wow, this is nice – why have we been fighting to get accommodation in the north?’ In the past the south has been less popular because it’s been difficult to reach, but now Coastal Aviation are offering daily flights between the northern and southern circuits or from Dar to the south.” Combining north and south is one way to grasp the ecological variety on offer in Tanzania. Forward-thinking travellers are also starting to combine southern circuit safaris with the spectacular island beaches of Mozambique, currently about as up-and-coming as it gets. Already, Mozambique-based travel company Maluane are offering flights between safari destinations in Tanzania and the spectacular beaches of Mozambique’s islands. It may be that in the future, Mozambique will see the same explosion in tourism as Tanzania has experienced over the past five years. For now, tour operators, camp managers and tourists in Tanzania are riding the wave of the world’s biggest conservation effort.

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